Japan

Sexuality in the land of the rising sun is an often confusing and disturbing subject. There’s nothing a tentacle can’t penetrate, is what I’m saying. But as with all things Japanese, when they choose to unwind, they do it in the most insane and amazing way. Case in point, Japan’s “Naked Festival”.

​Japan is a strange and confusing land. A place where their dogs have a better night life than I do, where they are in a constant state of re-building their nation’s capitol after seemingly ceaseless man-made and natural disasters, giant monster attacks, and where their sexuality is an often confusing, usually disturbing thing.

Which brings us to 9000 nearly naked men clamoring for the opportunity to ram their 20 centimeter lucky sticks into a priest’s box… You know, for luck.

Throw your hands in the air, like you’re trying to catch a luck-granting phallus!

As I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, the 500 year old Hadaka Matsuri, aka “Naked Festival” was held again this past weekend at the Saidai-ji Temple in Okayama, Japan. The event is “highlighted” by a gathering of thousands of be-loin-clothed Japanese men clambering for a pair of 4 centimeter by 20 centimeter batons (shingi), (which are “believed to bring good luck for an entire year to whoever catches them”) hurled from a window by a priest who I’m only assuming, is wearing even less pants behind that window sill.

It looks like the most confusing riot you’ve ever gotten a boner at!

Trying to understand Japanese sexual customs is better left to scholars and mad men who know better the allure of vending machines filled with used panties and pixelated pubic hair–Men who know how a nation can accept and welcome violation via animated tentacle. But the way I see it, 9000 freshly bathed, nearly nude tiny men crammed into one little house of worship, eagerly fighting for the opportunity to ram their lucky wood into a cold, waiting box just sounds like one of the more healthy outlets they have for loosing their pent up frustrations. So come on everybody! Tear off those pants, grab your shingi and fill up that naughty masu! It’s a G-d party!

Just a bunch of guys sharing a bath before smushing themselves together for the night… Ladies.

Yesterday, VFoC’s own Jesse J. wrote about China and how they’re completely out of control and making us literally shit our pants. Funny he should say SHIT (I could be paraphrasing), because that’s what China is doing to us, YET AGAIN, today. Not only are WE shitting our pants, but the crazy muthafukkin Chinese, well one professor An Yashi to be specific, is collecting cute little panda poopoos and making it into the world’s “most expensive tea”. Ok, I’m very sorry dear delicate reader, I know this isn’t the kind of thing you want to wander over to our website and read on a Wednesday evening, but know this, when you leave our website you’ll be just a little bit more hardened to the real world, the world out there that skirts around issues and makes things bubblegum and candydrops. So continue reading and become an outraged, dreamless drifter like we here at VFoC have become.

Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting please !!

Not long ago, I read a story about some Japanese scientist making nutritious steakstuff out of human poop. Now granted, Japan and China are two different entitites, but they’re kinda the same, you know. Which leads me to the question, “What in the hell is your fascination with fecal matter you Asians?”. First you want to pretend it’s Play-Doh and run it through the Fun Time Play-Doh Meat Factory Playset making tri-tip and filet mignon and now you want to shovel up some of Kung Fu Panda’s finest from the zoo, dry it, shove it in a fine gossamer mesh pyramid tea bag that allows top-quality panda nuggets to reach their full potential, unfurl, and expand for an even and flavor-rich infusion, and then have Teavana sell it to us at the mall? And on top of it all you greedy shit collectors want to sell it at $40,000/lb. ?? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT TO DO YOU GREEDY SHIT PEOPLE??

Look, I’m not a drug dealer, nor do I know how much drugs cost out there on the street

The latest tea kiosk at the mall

market, but I could venture to guess that I could buy enough blow for $40,000 to get at least a dozen pandas straight jacked out of their gourd and shit directly into my glass of hot boiling water and collect the rest of the other 11’s droppings for many a long cold winter night for years to come. So, my hats off to you for your entrepreneurial endeavor, but let’s get real Chinese tea guy, if people want a hot steamy cup of brown liquid that resembles panda dookie, they could just as easily run over to Starbuck’s and save $39,990.

Like this:

Hey everybody! Looking forward to celebrating the proud Mexican people’s day of Independence!? Well that shit ain’t ’till the middle of September so you’re gonna be dry a long time if that’s what you’re REALLY looking to celebrate. But let’s be honest, that’s not why you’re excited about Cinco de Mayo. We know it’s not why we are. It’s because the fifth of May isn’t about Mexican independence, hell, it’s barely about Mexicans, it’s just another American invented excuse to get shit faced and blame it on the calendar!

Cinco de Mayo is no more about Mexican culture than St. Patrick’s Day is about Irish culture. The both of them are simply about Drinking culture. Which naturally got us to thinking, we’re drunks, we need more excuses for that to be publicly acceptable. And with that in mind Van Full of Candy is proud to present, more vaguely ethnic holiday type events where it’s okay to make a gigantic ass out of yourself in the name of wearing a brightly colored t-shirt proudly exclaiming how you are an ethnicity that you clearly aren’t. For on these days, we are all brothers, we are all drunken Americans!

Gold goin' in and gold goin' out.

April 30th – Casimir the Pole Drunky Day

Poland was established around 700BC, but it wasn’t until the “Piast Dynasty” in 1365 that the first “Polish Joke” was accidentally uttered by Casimir III the Great when he asked “How many damn Poles does it take to polish my scepter?” He got huge laughter from everyone in his royal gold room. So much so that he immediately decreed that to be “the first official Polish joke”. He spake this joke on April 30th, which happened to also be on his birthday, so the celebration is of the birth of the joke and also of the king. The celebration in America consists of wearing one’s favorite red & white apparel in honor of the Polish flag. The drinking aspect of the celebration is all about taking shot upon shot of Goldwasser and coming up with the crudest joke possible until somebody is so offended that a bar fight breaks out. After the brawl everybody hugs and makes up and then throws up.

Smooth, like a Scot's... nothing.

September 8th – Sir Wallace’s Day

To coincide with Braveheart’s original UK theatrical release date, we celebrate the life and liver of Sir William Wallace. What surprises me is with as much as the Scots love to drink, how there isn’t already an excuse holiday in their honor. I mean, there’s a drink named after these punch happy, incomprehensible people! That kind of dedication hasn’t been seen on this planet since the nomadic Schnapps tribes of the third century, finally having run out of drink and having to stop to rest their splitting headaches settled upon a plot of land to call their own and changed their name to “Aztec”. So why don’t we have a drinking holiday celebrating their crazy, drunken culture? Is it because most Americans can’t tell the difference between a Scot and a dirty low down swarthy Irishman? Probably, but we’ll teach them how! Paint your face, slur something about how they can take your empty, but they can never take away your freedom to buy another round, fall down and be peed on. We’re all Scottish today laddie!

"Wanted (WANTED!), dead or alive!"

December 7th – Super Imbibe Number One Sing Night Go!

Before most people only thought of the Japanese people as dangerously irradiated and damp, they were largely recognized as a quiet, polite, buttoned down people. Of course, they also enjoy the most ridiculous and insane game shows ever devised by asylum inmates, and like their pornography filled with tentacles. The Japanese people are fucking confusing. But one thing is certain, they love Sake. After a hard day at work the Japanese business men will take the train out to the bars, sing karaoke and get absolutely pissed with their bosses. Slobbering drunk and belligerent and then the next day go back into work and resume their quiet work a day roles. The date of Super Imbibe Number One Sing Night Go is an attempt to take back a day that frankly hasn’t lived in infamy for quite some time since most of the Greatest Generation is almost gone by now, and really, it’s for the best, they’ve been making all of the rest of us look kind of shitty for a long time. We’ll feel much better about ourselves and our singing voices as we turn our ties into head bands, belt out some Bon Jovi and celebrate Super Imbibe Number One Sing Night Go! A day that will live in drinkfamy!

Thai "Cheers Beer" Girls - Best Holiday EVER!!

December 21 – Railroad of Death Day

In the year 1941, Japan really really wanted to get to the Malayan frontier probably to call it their own or shoot some shit up. Regardless of their motive, Thailand happened to be in the way.

The Japanese army did not want to go ALLLLL the way around Thailand to get there so they said “let us cross your land”. They didn’t say please or anything, so the Thai’s took exception to that and said “ummm yeah no”, to which Japan said “WAR!!”. After the entire 8 hours of the war, Thailand said “You know what? we’re done, go ahead and cross. But with one exception. You help us build a railroad across our country.” Japan agreed and sent over 200,000 Asian “helpers” and 60,000 POWs, all of which died in the severe working conditions and the beatings that were given by the Japanese. So to celebrate this, America dresses up in railroad prisoner garb and let themselves get “beat” by the proprieters of each bar they attend on their “Bar Railroad Crawl”. It’s one of the least popular celebrations due to the pain, but is heralded as the best Thai celebration ever. The popular drink for this day is actually comprised of Thai beer and a shot of sake to signify the two countries coming together for their time of mass slave killing, it’s fittingly called “The Railroad Beating”.

Disclaimer: This is going to be a long, angry, fed up rant. If that’s your kind of thing, please feel free to enjoy. If this isn’t your idea of a fun internet time, have one of these:

And we’ll see you tomorrow. For those sticking with us, let’s begin…

Settle down. Right now. Cut it out and settle down. Take a breath. Count backwards. Close your eyes and go to someplace less screamy and hysterical. You make me want to punch you in the face.

Now settle down again, because I probably don’t mean you specifically. This message is intended for the flailing, hyper sensitive, unhelpful masses who lose their shit any time something that has absolutely nothing to do with them happens thousands of miles away from their fat white uselessness. This probably isn’t you since you’re reading my insightful chiding of those noncontributing, knee jerk, bleating piles of predictable mock outrage, so you likely agree with me to some degree. Otherwise I look forward to explaining many of these words to you in response to your key board mashed, half formed responses in the comment field below.

With every natural disaster that strikes some, never could be prepared enough to withstand the very planet that it sits on bucking like it’s got a leg cramp, place, the usual groups of reactionaries seep out of the cracks in the Earth to descend upon those who have honestly already been fucked with enough. It never fails. These folks came out for Haiti and Katrina and they’ll be back for the next time the planet just does something that planets do and couldn’t care less how it affects the insignificant specks that are currently residing on it. Those groups are of course:

The God Did Thisers.

The White Guilt Outrage Proxy.

and the Relief Scum.

Let’s examine each individually shall we?

"I know I made you that way, that's what makes it so hilarious!"

God’s a fucking dick. Apparently. Because while we were given free will and dominion over his Earth, apparently any time some dude sticks his penis into the consensual orifice of another fellah, God just loses his shit and kills thousands of people. And of course if two ladies want to maybe get married and raise the discarded child of a proper, unhappy, natural coupling of an irresponsible man and a selfish woman, God will, quite understandably, pick up his planet and shake it like a screaming baby until everybody gets the hint that it’s not hot for him unless a man layeth down with a woman and get it on for all of his omnipotent jollies.

There’s a group of God’s messengers who every time something like this happens can’t get in front of a microphone fast enough to tell us that this is all because we don’t pray hard enough. You’re telling me that this is the guy that you want to hang out with for the rest of eternity? Some thin skinned deity who throws a bitch fit every time something doesn’t go his way. And these God Did Thisers celebrate and chuckle and told you so every time a natural disaster, caused entirely by the inner workings of this planet and not the whims of some bearded sky douche, claims thousands of innocent lives. Unless this disaster was delivered with laser like precision and all of these thousands of people were gay loving gay lovers who just loved to gay, it’s likely that a lot of people who never engaged in any form of gayity were claimed in God’s latest wrath spasm. So how can these supposed men of God be so giddy and excited about all of this carnage caused, by their own claims, as an act directly from their great invisible man? How is that holy? How the fuck does that jibe at all with your supposed message of love and salvation? Fuck you, fuck you and your violent, vindictive, God of slaughter and intolerance.

People digging out of the splintered remains of what is left of their entire lives don’t care if someone they’ll never know makes a poorly delivered joke that they’ll never hear and don’t need you to be offended for them. Given a little time and distance, the guy who lost his entire existence to a wall of water could probably even laugh at their own circumstance and will likely laugh at the joke about the next poor asshole digging himself out of some not dissimilar tragedy. So any time anyone says something that you think should offend a victim that you have absolutely no connection with, you don’t have to demand they be fired or cry like you actually care about the people they didn’t actually insult. You can just look at that joke, shrug to yourself and say “That’s not a very well thought out or executed comedic premise.” and go on about your day, or you can chuckle quietly to yourself while silently hating being amused by something that really doesn’t affect you in the first place.

You didn’t care about any of these people a minute before you heard that there was an earthquake, and it has not suddenly become your job to make sure that everyone understands that you super care now and that they should too. Fuck you and your disingenuous outrage.

They make games where they take out their frustration by fingering their boss in the ass... I think they're gonna be okay...

Japan doesn’t need your help. Japan doesn’t want your help. But you feel for some reason that you have to text them some money. Good for you, what ever makes you feel like you’re saving the world, hero. But invariably with every relief effort that springs up around these disasters there are people who will take advantage of your misguided good intentions and somehow it works every damned time. If you have to donate to a relief effort, and you don’t, make sure you have ever heard of the name of the people you’re giving your money to. These people preying upon the well meaning are no doubt some of the most vile scum bags on the planet, but if you are dumb enough to be suckered into these scams then you should clearly have someone else holding onto your money for you any way, and the guy who just stole it from you is as good a person as any for the job.

Just so we’re clear, I don’t hate Japan, I think it’s sad as hell what’s happened to my favorite weirdly perverse Asian nation, but we all need to just settle down for one god damned second. Do you honestly think that a country that had two nuclear weapons dropped on it only to become one of the great economic and cultural forces on the planet isn’t going to be able to handle a little tsunami? It’s their fucking word! They probably get it. So just settle the fuck down and we’ll be back to shaking our head in confusion at the latest tentacle porn and ass rape simulation video games from the land of the rising sun in no time.

Like this:

Candy In Your Inbox?

I left the candy in the van, come with me and we'll get some. What's your favorite? If you would like some candy in your inbox enter your email address and click on the button below. So .. do ya wan't some? It's yummy.

WARNING:

Van Full of Candy only encourages you to climb aboard metaphorical vans for the sole purpose of humorous content. Any embarking upon physical vans, existing in a three dimensional space is to be done with the foreknowledge that you will almost certainly be molested therein. But if that's your thing, enjoy the ride...